Dangerous Curves Ahead (Watchers Crew) (6 page)

My face flamed where he touched, and not in the good way it had a moment ago. I scrambled to my feet.

Christopher lounged back against the pillows. “Do you swear you don’t masturbate? Because it’s not normal for a woman to come like that, especially a virgin.”

I couldn’t handle this conversation. I hoped over the pillows and grabbed for the door handle.

“Mary Katherine? What’s wrong?”

I yanked the door open. There were a few customers milling around the sex toys and DVD collection. Had they heard me?

Holly looked up and smiled at me. I saw it then. She had the same blue eyes as her son. And they were sparkling at me in the same way. She was thrilled I’d had an orgasm. She’d heard me having an orgasm. Which meant they all had.

I ducked my head, hiding my steaming cheeks. I made a mad dash for the exit. The bell rattled my nerves as I slammed out the door. I didn’t stop until I was in my car. Thankfully Lucille turned over on the first try. I took off down the street, going zero to forty in the old jalopy.
 

My mind reeled. Had it all been some kind of warped sex shop prank? Were mother and son some kind of sick duo that lured girls into the back room to… what? I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

It had all been too good to be true, right from the start. A handsome guy interested in me like that? Yeah, right, Mary Katherine. These kinds of things only happened in romance novels. Not to girls like me. Chubby virgins who wrote inspirational romance. I was easy prey; low hanging fruit.

They were probably laughing at me. Telling stories to the yoga sex class about the fat girl who got off from her breasts being massaged. Breasts that still tingled from Christopher’s touch.

 I launched into my apartment and slammed the door behind me. I wanted to cry but my body was too sensitized. I stripped off my clothing; down to my underwear, but my panties were moist.

I got the feeling that Christopher would’ve laughed at that word; moist. But my brain was too addled to think of another.

I sat on my bed, but I couldn’t sit still. I pulled on a robe and sat at my computer. I was a plotter. I spent hours pouring over research. I grafted spreadsheets for plots. I did psychological workups on my heroines, heroes, and villains. But tonight I just started typing.

The story shaped into an ugly duckling trope. A plain girl and the college jock. It was the typical teen-flick set up. He uses her to win a bet. The joke goes cruelly wrong. She runs off. But in my story he follows her.

As he comforts her, they begin to touch. He takes her hand. Then he touches her ear, then her shoulders, and finally her breasts. She has an orgasm from the breast manipulation.

The words flowed from me as the memories from my time with Christopher flooded my senses. There were no waves crashing. In the story, outside the marching band was practicing. Her orgasms came along the crescendo of the drumbeats.

By the time I finished writing, I was drenched in sweat again. I’d written four solid chapters. I sent it to my editor without doing a spell check.

It was the best I could do. If Moira didn’t like it, then maybe Hera would release me from my contract. I had nothing to lose.

The shower’s water was a raging flood on my sensitive skin. I could only stand it for a few moments. Orgasms were nothing like water on the body. I totally understood Christopher’s point now.

I hit the covers, and I was immediately pulled into a deep sleep.

I woke in the morning with a delicious hum running through my body. My hand rubbed at my chest and my whole body came alive, along with my memories.

I remembered Christopher watching me. Those bright blue eyes that had been so full of mischief… and awe. Those hands that had been so strong… and gentle. That voice that urged me to talk, to tell him a story, to share my feelings.

I tossed my head back down onto the pillows. The feathers let out a puff as my muddled head landed with a thud.

It was late in the morning by the time I rose. I trudged around my apartment. I cleaned the bathroom. I rearranged my closet, putting away the last of the winter items and hanging all of my spring dresses. I reorganized my shoes by heels, wedges, and flats.

I avoided my computer for as long as possible.

It was late afternoon but the time I finally sat down at the screen and prepared to face the world outside. I woke up the screen and waited to connect to Wi-Fi. I watched the inverted triangle go up and down, gaining in signal strength.

There was some fan mail. A few queries from other authors about joining in on a group promotion. A few bits and bobs of spam.

There was an email from Moira.

I almost avoided it, but my browser was on a setting where I could see the first line of the email. I saw the words “love it” and “want more.” I clicked open.

My eyes grew bigger and bigger as I read. Moira loved the writing I’d done in haste the other night. She thought it was fresh and exactly what she was looking for. Other than a spell and grammar check, the only thing she saw missing was the male POV.

My elation burst and the pieces came crashing down. It was a stretch for me to write that much from the heroine’s POV. To detail someone’s first sexual experience outside of a passionate kiss. To detail
my
first sexual experience in such a detailed, unapologetic way.

I hadn’t truly thought anyone would want to read it. I hadn’t believed it was any good. Christopher had kept asking, no begging, me to tell him more. He’d wanted to hear my carnal thoughts. And now, it seemed, Moira wanted to share them with the world.

Along with the male’s point of view on the matter.
 

I’d never written the male POV before. I had no clue what men thought. I was a romance writer, not a mind reader. But apparently men’s perspectives was all the rage now; dual POV and in the third person.

I’d dug myself into the corner of writing a sexy book. Now, I was deep in the trenches having to convince the reader I knew what men thought. My back was between a rock and a hard place.

And then I saw his email.

At first I thought it was just a new fan. The sender’s username was “[email protected].” The subject line from the browser read, “I enjoyed meeting you”. That caught my attention because I hadn’t done any reader events or conventions in months.

Dear MK,

I enjoyed meeting you the other day. I picked up one of your books and read it last night. I wasn’t too surprised that I enjoyed it. As I’m sure you could tell, I like the way you describe things.

I’m sorry you were embarrassed by what happened between us. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and you should be proud that your body can achieve that kind of reaction. Most women would kill to be so in tuned with their bodies.

Your breasts were magnificent to hold. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but it was like they got bigger the more I touched them. That’s probably wishful thinking on my part. I’m dying to know what color your nipples blush. I wonder if they turn the same pink as your neck and cheeks did? My favorite part of our time together was how your breathing changed. I read in your book about hearts fluttering. Your breath did that when you came. I felt the shudders all over your body.

Anyway, I hope we can still be friends. I liked talking to you as much as I liked watching you come. If you need anymore help with your book, hit me up.

~Crow
 

I felt the tingles in my breasts reading his words. My heart pounded in my ears when he reminded me of the flutters I’d felt all over my body. My nipples hardened when I reread the part where he wondered about their color. I wanted him to see that he was right. Even though my hair was brown, my skin was fair and my nipples did turn pink when they hardened. They were likely almost red now.

He wanted to be my friend. My eyes blurred on that word. The letters jumbled and rearranged themselves into something more.

Not only was the man a poet. He’d told the story through a male’s perspective. And he’d offered to help me again. It was low hanging fruit. But the question was should I reach for it?

Chapter Eight

Every girl dreams of her wedding day. In my head, I saw myself standing on a beach.
No, wait. Scratch that. That was my sixteen-year-old dream.

As a twenty-four-year-old woman, I saw myself standing on a hilltop overlooking a body of water; probably a lake. I didn’t wear white. Even though I could because, well, I qualified. But it was not the best color on me.

Instead, I wore a light purple, princess cut gown. The bodice was strong enough to manage my girls. It cinched at the waist and then flowed down my curves giving me a semblance of an hourglass shape. I had a ton of tendrils curling around the nape of my neck. I wore a tiara because my fiancé had a habit of calling me his princess.

But it was a wedding which meant there were some unpleasant parts. My mom would manage the whole thing and be the equivalent of a bridezilla, or whatever the term was for a mother-of-the-bride-zilla. My sister would complain the whole time, insisting that my wedding was costing more than hers. Her children would act out and whine and fidget during the procession. Her husband, if he showed up, would forget to turn off his cellphone. It would ring during the ceremony and he’d disappear to take the business call. My dad would give me away. Later during the reception, he would sneak off with some widow from the groom’s side.

But it didn’t matter. I understood, even in a dream, that weddings were for the family and friends. Marriage was for the husband and wife. The wedding itself lasted the day, but the marriage, my marriage, would last forever. Just like my grandparents.

I’d never seen Gram and Pop have an argument. They’d never spent the night apart. And they were always there lending support to each other.

In my head my father was already gone from the rented hall. My mother trolled the dance floor complaining about him to anyone who would listen. My sister’s husband pulled off in his two-seater convertible to take care of business, leaving my sister to tend to her rowdy bunch all on her own.

But in my dream, standing before my new husband, we’d get lost in each other, not in the chaos. Standing before the reverend, he’d tell us we could seal our vows with a kiss. I would run my hand through my husband’s blonde hair and-

“Mary Kate, I said we’re pushing up your publishing date.”

I had tuned out my editor over the phone. But, with the news she delivered, I tuned her back in.

“We’ve already been thinking about covers,” Moira said. “I hate the whole bare chested, six-pack abs craze. But the hell if it doesn’t sell. We’ll be booking a cover shoot in the next month.”

“Wow, so soon,” I said. “I haven’t even finished the first draft.”

“You’ve never let us down before,” said Moira.

I was out of the slow lane with the new authors and back in the fast lane where I belonged.

“If there’s one thing I can say about you, you’ve never missed a deadline. Not once.”

That was true. I was a consummate professional. I’d heard of other authors in the publishing house pushing their due dates back by months. I always had my manuscript in early. I didn’t understand what those other authors did all day? My days were spent with my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard.

I didn’t have much of a social life. I didn’t date often. The men in real life could never compare to the one's in my head. I’d never been one for girls night, much preferring to curl up with a good book and a warm cup of tea.

“Where did all of this inspiration come from?” asked Moira. “Is there a new guy?”

Moira and I weren’t the best of friends. We weren’t actually friends at all. But I wound up opening my mouth. “It’s very new.”

Funny that; I said its new, even though in my mind Christopher was completely entwined in my life. I’d had a pretend baby within an hour of meeting him. I had to rewrite that initial story to get the ring on my finger. A week later, in this new fantasy world of marital bliss, we were back from our honeymoon with child number one cooking in the oven.

“The facts always make the best fiction,” said Moira. “If you’re writing without an outline, I’d like to see the next three chapters soon. And I’m looking forward to reading the hero’s perspective.”

Right. That.

I got off the phone with Moira and stared at the blinking cursor. My butt was in the chair. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. But nothing came.

I didn’t know how to think like a man. In my books, men did everything I told them to do. They first acted aloof, not saying anything to my heroines. They sometimes behaved like jerks. But, I, as their creator always knew they were hiding feelings and leaving their true desires unsaid, just like Fitzwilliam Darcy, the ultimate hero. At the end of the stories, also like Mr. Darcy, the men came up with poetic grand gestures that would wipe my heroines’ minds of all the bad times and send her into their arms for a happily-ever-after.

That was simply how things were done in the world of romance.

But with this manuscript, I was supposed to write from the male’s perspective. I had no clue how to do that outside of the grand speech at the end. Who knew what men thought day in and day out?

My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a quarter hour. My butt squirmed in my seat. Finally, I switched from my word processing program to a web browser.

Christopher had left his phone number in the email, but I’d hesitated in calling him. His words were lovely and sincere. A great view into the male perspective. There was something between us, I knew it. I’d written enough about chemistry to know when I saw it in real life.

But he was clearly a player. He’d told me to my face that he slept around. I was a smart girl. I knew our fantasy marriage couldn’t exist outside of my head.

Could it?

My cell phone rang. I grimaced when I saw my mother’s name on the caller ID.

“Principal Stafford was very disappointed not to meet you, Mary Katherine.”

“I don’t know why? He was your guest not mine.”